BY ERNESTO CHE GUEVARA
The following is the chapter "On the March" from
Episodes of the Cuban Revolutionary War - 1956-58 by Ernesto Che Guevara. The book was written as a series of
articles that appeared in Verde Olivo (Olive Drab), the
weekly publication of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Cuba, between 1961 and 1964.
In February 1996 Pathfinder Press will release a new edition of the Episodes, including material previously not available in English. The excerpt below is copyright Pathfinder Press and is reprinted by permission. Subheadings are by the Militant.
By Ernesto Che Guevara
May 1957
The first two weeks of May were days of continual marching toward our objective. At the beginning of the month, we were on a hill along the crest of the Sierra Maestra close to the Turquino; we were crossing regions that later were the scenes of many events of the revolution. We passed through Santa Ana and El Hombrito; later on, at Pico Verde, we found [Manuel] Escudero's house and we continued until we reached the Loma del Burro.
We were moving eastward, looking for the weapons that were supposed to be sent from Santiago and would be hidden in the region of the Loma del Burro, close to Oro de Guisa. One night during this two-week journey, while going to carry out a private necessity, I confused the paths and was lost for three days until I found the troops again at a spot called El Hombrito.
At that time I realized that we were each carrying on our backs everything necessary for individual survival: salt, cooking oil, canned foods, canned milk, everything required for sleeping, making a fire, and cooking, and also a compass, on which I had relied very heavily until then.
Finding myself lost, the next morning I took out the compass and, guiding myself with it, I continued for a day and a half until I realized that I was even more lost. I approached a peasant hut and the people directed me to the rebel encampment. Later we would realize that in such rugged territory as the Sierra Maestra a compass can only give a general orientation, never a definite course; one has either to be led by guides or to know the area oneself, as we later knew it when I was operating in that same region.
I was very moved by the warm reception that greeted me when I rejoined the column. When I arrived they had just held a people's trial in which three informers were tried, and one of them, named Nápoles, was condemned to death. Camilo [Cienfuegos] chaired that tribunal.
Performing duties as doctor
During those days I had to perform my duties as doctor,
and in each little village or hamlet I set up my
consulting station. It was monotonous, for I had few
medicines to offer and the clinical cases in the Sierra
were all more or less the same: prematurely aged and
toothless women, children with distended bellies,
parasitism, rickets, general vitamin deficiency-these were
the marks of the Sierra Maestra.(1)
Even today they continue, but in much smaller proportion. The children of those mothers of the Sierra have gone to study at the Camilo Cienfuegos School City; they are grown up and healthy and are different boys and girls from the first undernourished inhabitants of our pioneer School City.(2 )
I remember that a little girl was watching the consultations that I gave to the women of the region. They came in with an almost religious air to find out the cause of their sufferings. When her mother arrived, the little girl, after attentively watching several previous examinations in the little hut that served as my clinic, chattered gaily: "Mommy, this doctor says the same thing to everybody."
And it was absolutely true; my knowledge was good for little else. But in addition, they all had the same clinical traits, and without knowing it they each told the same heartrending story. What would have happened if the doctor had diagnosed the strange tiredness that the young mother of several children suffered when she carried a pail of water up from the creek to the house as being due simply to too much work on such a poor and meager diet? Her exhaustion is something inexplicable to her, since all her life the woman has taken the same pails of water to the same place, and only now does she feel tired.
People in Sierra grow like wild flowers
The people in the Sierra grow like wild flowers,
untended and without care, and they wear themselves out
rapidly, working without reward. There, during those
consultations, we began to feel in our flesh and blood the
need for a definitive change in the life of the people.
The idea of agrarian reform became clear, and oneness with
the people ceased being theory and was converted into a
fundamental part of our being.
The guerrillas and the peasantry began to merge into a single mass, without our being able to say at what precise moment on the long revolutionary road this happened, nor at which moment the words became profoundly real and we became a part of the peasantry. In my own case, at least, those consultations with the peasants of the Sierra converted my spontaneous and somewhat lyrical resolve into something of a different nature, more real. Those suffering and loyal inhabitants of the Sierra Maestra have never suspected the role they played in forging our revolutionary ideas.
It was there that Guillermo García was promoted to captain and took charge of all the peasants who joined the column. Perhaps Comrade Guillermo does not remember the date: it is noted in my diary as May 6, 1957.
The following day, Haydée Santamaría left with precise instructions from Fidel, to make the necessary contacts. But a day later we got the news of the arrest of "Nicaragua" -Commander Iglesias, who was in charge of bringing us the weapons. This was quite disconcerting for us, as we could not imagine what we would do now to get them; nevertheless, we decided to continue walking in the same direction.
We reached a place near Pino del Agua, a small ravine with an abandoned lumber yard on the very edge of the Sierra Maestra; there were also two uninhabited peasant huts. Near a road, one of our patrols captured an army corporal. This individual was well known for his crimes going back to the time of Machado. For this reason some of our troops proposed that he be executed, but Fidel refused; we simply left him guarded by the new recruits who did not yet have rifles. He was warned that any attempt to escape would cost him his life.
Most of us continued on our way to see if the weapons had arrived at the agreed spot, and if so, to transport them. It was a long hike, although with less weight, since our full knapsacks had been left in the camp where the prisoner was.
The march, however, was fruitless: the equipment had not arrived, which we naturally attributed to the arrest of "Nicaragua." We were able to purchase a substantial amount of food at a store, so we returned to camp with a different, although welcome, load.
Suddenly shots ahead of us
We were returning slowly by the same road, exhausted,
moving along the crests of the Sierra Maestra and crossing
the open spaces carefully. Suddenly we heard shots ahead
of us. We were worried because one of our men had gone on
ahead in order to reach the camp as soon as possible; he
was Guillermo Domínguez, a lieutenant of our troop and
one of the men who had arrived with the reinforcements
from Santiago.
We prepared for all contingencies while we sent out some scouts. After a reasonable length of time, the scouts appeared accompanied by Comrade Fiallo, a new recruit who belonged to Crescencio's group and had joined the guerrillas during our absence. He had come from our camp and explained that there was a dead body on the road, and that there had been an encounter with the enemy, who had retreated in the direction of Pino del Agua where there was a larger detachment.
We advanced cautiously, and came upon the body, which I recognized. It was Guillermo Domínguez; he was naked from the waist up and had a bullet hole in the left elbow, and a bayonet wound in the left upper chest; his head was literally shattered by a shot, apparently from his own shotgun. Some buckshot pellets remained as evidence in the lacerated flesh of our unfortunate comrade.
We were able to reconstruct the facts by analyzing various data: the enemy soldiers were apparently scouting for their friend, the corporal we had captured. They had heard Domínguez coming toward them, walking without much concern, for he had traveled the same path the day before.
They had taken him prisoner; but some of Crescencio's men were coming to meet us from the other direction. On surprising the soldiers from the rear, Crescencio's men fired and the soldiers retreated, murdering our comrade Domínguez before fleeing.
Pino del Agua is the site of a sawmill in the middle of the Sierra, and the path the guards took is an old crossroad for transporting lumber. We had to follow this trail for a hundred meters, in order to reach our narrow path. Our comrade had not taken the most elementary precautions in this case, and was unlucky enough to bump into the soldiers.
His bitter fate served us as an example for the future.
Published in Verde Olivo, Dec. 24, 1961.
1. Average life expectancy in Cuba during the late 1950s was estimated to be between 55 and 62 years, with infant mortality at 60 per 1,000 live births. Health conditions in rural areas such as the Sierra Maestra were even worse. In 1957, 14 percent of rural workers had suffered from tuberculosis; 13 percent from typhoid fever; 31 percent from malaria; and 36 percent from intestinal parasites. By the mid-1990s average life expectancy in Cuba had reached over 75 years, with infant mortality dropping to under 10 per 1,000 live births, and with an extensive network of health care in both rural and urban areas.
2. The Camilo Cienfuegos School City was the first boarding school built in the Sierra Maestra after the revolution, with a capacity of five thousand children from all parts of the Sierra.